


Eye Contact

by berlynn_wohl



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Science Fiction, Kink Meme, M/M, Sexual Content
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-09-04
Updated: 2013-09-04
Packaged: 2017-12-25 15:10:04
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,609
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/954592
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/berlynn_wohl/pseuds/berlynn_wohl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There are things about John that Sherlock not only does not know, but he does not know that he does not know.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Eye Contact

This fic is a fill for [these](http://sherlockbbc-fic.livejournal.com/10038.html?thread=49327414#t49327414) [three](http://sherlockbbc-fic.livejournal.com/16422.html?thread=93139494#t93139494) [prompts](http://sherlockbbc-fic.livejournal.com/20063.html?thread=122662495#t122662495) on the kinkmeme. READING THE PROMPTS WILL SPOIL YOU FOR PRETTY MUCH EVERYTHING THAT HAPPENS. Just so you know. :)

 

 

**1.**

 

Sherlock turned the mobile phone over in his hand, twice. Once was usually all he needed to glean all available information. But there was something different about John Watson’s phone, which was exciting, because that meant there was something different about John Watson. The phone’s previous owner and their flaws, the implications of the phone now being in John’s possession, all this was obvious to Sherlock, but the brevity of their initial encounter necessitated that he hand the phone back to John before he had unlocked all of its secrets.

This gap in the data clawed at Sherlock’s mind – why was it clawing? Why not merely nagging? – until John finally explained that “Harry” was short for “Harriet.” Ah, so that was that, then. It was always something; he was just happy that it had been cleared up by that point, so that he could devote his complete attention to the situation at hand, at Lauriston Gardens.

 

 

**2.**

 

 _Doctor_ John Watson – when Mycroft said the name in his head, there was always an ironic tinge to the title. Why did he not buy into John Watson’s identity? His personal records were flawless and airtight – not a hint of illicit alteration. And standing before him now, this diminutive but unafraid man seemed utterly above reproach, propensity for danger aside. Unmistakable aura of military doctor clinging to him. And yet, and yet…

“You’re very loyal, very quickly,” Mycroft remarked, and watched carefully for Doctor Watson’s reaction. All he saw in the man’s face was a confirmation of his statement. John Watson was not indiscriminately loyal, not recklessly loyal – but he was loyal now, to Sherlock, and Mycroft sensed that it was already too late to convince Doctor Watson to revoke that devotion. And this doubt in his own ability to convince anyone of anything – however brief and nebulous this doubt was – was deeply disturbing to him.

 

**3.**

 

_He can present a terse front. He won’t suffer fools gladly. But he is extremely good at what he does, and deep down he has a quality that makes him indispensable as a doctor and as a soldier, a quality even more valuable than competency: he genuinely likes people and wants to help them._

This description, though often cloaked in less colloquial language within military documents and hospital evaluations, was the common conclusion made about John Watson, Doctor John Watson, and Captain John Watson.

And it was accurate. John _was_ a man of great and varied skill, and he _was_ quite fond of humans.

 

**4.**

 

The liquid paraffin engulfed John’s hand warmly as it was lowered into the pan. Sherlock held John’s wrist and lifted the hand out after an appropriate interval. For several minutes, he continued to hold John’s hand aloft whilst the paraffin opened the pores in his hand and attached itself to the gunpowder (among other foreign particles) therein.

Once it had dried and solidified, the paraffin peeled easily away from John’s skin, leaving it not only free of gunpowder nitrates but softer and more supple as well, though presumably this was a bonus result and not part of Sherlock’s motivation to apply it.

John watched Sherlock carefully. He was familiar with the process of removing powder from flesh, but had – perhaps surprisingly – never seen it applied. He had already learned so much from Sherlock tonight; Sherlock’s brain was full and open in a way that no one else’s was, that John had met before. At the start of the evening, the depth and breadth of Sherlock’s mind was apparent, but scattered and difficult to measure. Now, as John watched the precise peeling of the wax, he relished the opportunity to examine an application of such a particular fine point of Sherlock’s instrument. He was comforted; his initial instinct, to take up with this man on the grounds that he might prove an obvious boon to his mission, was well-founded.

As Sherlock turned to scrutinise the powder-ridden piece of paraffin, he made eye contact with John, so briefly as to be nearly imperceptible, yet so intensely that John uttered a soft grunt, as if he’d misjudged a short distance and collided with the furniture.

“I can’t imagine that hurt,” Sherlock said, looking at John’s wax-free hand.

“No, no, I just…had a realisation.” He meant _epiphany_ , really.

“Realisation? What have you realised?” Sherlock searched John’s face for an answer, but found none. There was still something that he was missing about John. What was it?

 

**5.**

 

All alone in his new little room upstairs, sitting at the edge of the bed, John had been holding his Browning for nearly half an hour, having long since finished cleaning it. The metal was warm from his body heat and smeared with his fingerprints from the prolonged handling. He was having difficulty moving on from this moment. The day before yesterday, he had known that he would be using this gun. He had held it in is hands just as he held it now, and had decided that today, it would be in his hand for the last time.

For all his knowledge and experience, this change in his situation – the dramatic detour and the parallel result – seemed to be outside his ability to parse. To have believed that there was nothing left for him to do here, and then to be proven so wrong. But where yesterday the nearness of the end had been a comforting certainty for him, now the gaping chasm of an uncertain future loomed before him once more. There was a possibility that it could be a very happy future indeed. But because he was unable to know whether it _would_ be, sadly the thought only filled him with dread. It didn’t feel like he was starting over. No, that phrase implied that he would be re-treading familiar territory. Instead, something very new and different was about to happen to John.

 

**6.**

 

Sherlock opened his eyes, his vision filled with the stained but structurally sound ceiling. The key to knowing whether or not Sam Nguyen had sabotaged that product launch lay in the snowfall in Kitchener, Ontario on the fifteenth of January. Obvious. He reached down for his laptop. It sat askew near the end of his sofa, just beyond his grasp as it turned out. So instead he flung his arm out to the side, where it came to rest on John’s laptop, which was on the coffee table. He lifted the lid to wake it up; it was password protected. Sherlock thought about the most likely arrangement of John’s bedsit, what objects must have been within his line of sight when he set the password.

The thought briefly occurred that it would have taken less time to simply sit up and retrieve his own computer, but this was more interesting, and currently Sherlock had more time than entertainment available to him. By the third try he had access to John’s desktop.

After confirming that Kitchener had received ten centimetres of snow on the fifteenth of January, in addition to the three centimetres already on the ground at five AM, he sent a brief email outlining his conclusion to the chief operations officer of Azimuth Technologies, and was just about to close John’s laptop when he caught sight of an unfamiliar icon on the taskbar. He clicked on it, and the screen went black. Then, a single line of unintelligible characters appeared. They belonged to no written language that Sherlock knew of. When he shifted to sit up, he thought he would be blinded by a red beam emanating from an aperture above the screen. A second line of text blinked three times before disappearing. A retinal scan? On a commercially available laptop?

Sherlock’s stomach twisted: this was Mycroft’s doing. It had to be; what possible other explanation was there? The strange characters were obviously a code, designed to thwart Sherlock, and the retinal scan would guarantee John secure access to Mycroft, to whom he could divulge any bit of data which Mycroft might care to have. It seemed a bit much, but then again, perhaps Mycroft felt that there were details even CCTV and listening devices could not acquire. It all made sense; if Sherlock perceived something unique and valuable in John, then John would certainly not have escaped Mycroft’s notice.

Sherlock spent the rest of the afternoon turning the flat upside down, searching for any other book, scrap of paper, or napkin that might also bear the mysterious code. He found none. He also found no other item which would lead one to believe that John was anything other than a doctor recently discharged from military service. A terse text to Mycroft garnered a reply which Sherlock felt was genuinely bewildered, consistent with John’s earlier assertion that he had refused Mycroft’s offer of money in exchange for information.

As far as Sherlock was concerned, that left one possibility: John was in the employ of some sort of foreign agency, whether official or…otherwise. Dismaying as this was, at least things had gotten more interesting. Now Sherlock would need to be on his guard, taking care about what he said and did, while never letting on that he knew John’s secret – and he would also, naturally, have to discover what that secret _was_.

 

**7.**

 

John lifted the dead girl’s distended earlobe with his first two fingers, then pushed them through the hole created by the plug. Having been subjected to involuntary bodily mutilation, he did not understand why someone would _willingly_ subject themselves to it, but he said nothing aloud on the subject.

As he was examining the green discoluoration around the second finger of the girl’s right hand, Sherlock said, “Point excellently made, John. Where is the girl’s jewellry?”

“She wasn’t wearing any when they brought her in,” Molly said. “Not even the…” At a loss for the terminology, she made a gesture with her thumb and forefinger against her earlobe to indicate the gauge of the plugs.

Sherlock continued to gaze at the corpse, but his eyes were glassy. He wasn’t examining her at the moment; he was pondering something. By watching him carefully these past months, John had learned to discern Sherlock’s various states of mind. Not merely Sherlock’s cardinal emotions – anger, contempt, frustration – but all the nuances of his psyche: his rote acquisition of data when it was essential to an unremarkable case, versus the insatiable devouring of data when he was genuinely and intensely curious. There was a…sprightliness to his movements when he felt the latter, the barest hint of a smile at the corner of his mouth, even in the midst of a grim scenario. And once John had figured this out, it didn’t take him long to notice that Sherlock’s observation of him was nearly always of the sprightly, corner-of-the-mouth-twitching variety.

This knowledge was a thread which he hung by. It was part of how they were connected now, though Sherlock did not seem to comprehend the true nature of it, and John had not yet found a way to explain it to him.

But Sherlock was not looking at John at the moment. He was in his own mind, digging something up from his store of knowledge of this case.

“The Carter girl wasn’t wearing any jewellry when she was found, either,” he muttered. “She had pierced ears but no earrings. And the Ross girl. She had that same green residue on one of her toes – she’d been wearing sandals when she was taken, and so probably a cheap toe-ring as well.”

“He’s taking the jewellry as souvenirs?” John suggested.

“I don’t think so. Jewellry is an obvious trophy item, but this man is too skilled. If he were so stupid as to collect items easily connected to his victims, he wouldn’t have been able to kill six young women and still evade me. No, this one is good. Most serial killers want to be found and stopped, deep down, but this one doesn’t. He is good at killing and he wants to keep doing it and he will keep doing it for as long as we allow him. He’s removing the jewellry for the same reason as he’s removing the clothes before dumping the bodies: it lengthens the identification process and makes our job more difficult. But he’s dumping the jewellry as well, somewhere else, somewhere far from the body _and_ the clothes.”

Sherlock turned to John now. “Go to Lestrade and get the addresses of the girls’ families. Ask them to describe the jewellry the girls were wearing when they disappeared. Get photographs if you can. He might be burying or sinking it all, or he might be disseminating it some other way, seeing that it ends up in the possession of random unsuspecting citizens in order to further confound those on his trail.”

He then gave Molly instructions as well, turning his back on John as though John were already no longer there. John pivoted and walked out, pushing doors open with one hand whilst texting Lestrade about his imminent arrival with the other. He knew he had a long day ahead of him, and in fact the task of interviewing tearful parents and collecting photos would likely stretch well into tomorrow.

He didn’t want to think about it. There was plenty of time for it to occupy his mind, but for now he had twenty minutes before he reached Scotland Yard in which to dwell instead on Sherlock, and how he might finally tell Sherlock about their connection. It all had to do with the realisation that John had back on that first night, which he had never articulated to Sherlock and which Sherlock had, apparently, never ascertained himself. John had been waiting for some sort of space to open up in their new collective life, into which this thing could slot nicely, but it hadn’t, and lately John had decided that it must be that he had to _make_ the space. It was all new to him, so it had taken him a while to come to that conclusion, but that had to be what it was.

 

 

**8.**

 

Here is something about John that not only did Sherlock not know, but _he did not know that he did not know_ : just prior to meeting Sherlock, John took sugar with his tea and coffee.

It was not always that way. For years processed sugar was so distasteful to John that he consumed it as seldom as possible, and preferred bitterness or acidity to sweetness when it came to these two beverages, both of which he only drank as a concession to social custom anyway.

However, as each year passed, and he settled further and further into his aging, unremarkable body, he began to feel more and more like what he assumed an ordinary human must feel like, and then one day when he took a sip of coffee that he had ordered black but that had mistakenly been sweetened, he found himself amenable to the taste. He had mixed feelings about this occurrence. On one hand, a more thorough assimilation could only improve his work. On the other hand, it was an indication of his increasing distance from his true self, and his home. His handler, the one known on this world as “Harriet,” had succumbed to one of the weaknesses of the human body – addiction. A report back home probably euphemistically listed her as having “gone native.” So this change in his tastes had given him every reason to be anxious.

But the first time he drank coffee after meeting Sherlock, he added his usual sugar (and milk, which he had also developed a taste for along the way), took a drink, and nearly spit it out. The cloying sweetness disturbed him in a way it had not done in years; it crawled down the back of his throat and up his nose. He tried hard not to draw attention to himself, but a few sips of water could not flush the nastiness away, and he had to excuse himself to the bathroom. If he had not been certain before, this was indisputable proof that what he had felt when he met Sherlock was precisely what he suspected it was. From here on out, as his true being reasserted itself, he would retain his general appearance, but his human affectations would continue to fall away; not only his taste for lactose and sweeteners, but also his sleep requirements and his inexplicable and purposeless limp. He wondered what, among his default physical qualities, would rise to the surface of his human skin. It was very exciting for him, and he now felt far more confident about the future, and about his fate being intertwined with Sherlock’s.

 

 

**9.**

 

_Watching himself on the monitor, he stomped his feet to simulate ambulation, and flapped his arms. His human body felt squishy and cumbersome, though the quartermaster assured him that he would grow accustomed to the feel of it.  
_

_“I’ve suited up researchers for four hundred and seventy three missions," she said. "It’s always the same: when they first put on the body, they feel like they can barely move. But when they return from the mission and have their original forms restored, they’re so used to the body, they have an even harder time re-learning to live without it.”  
_

_“Is that supposed to be comforting?” he huffed. He didn’t like they way the chest on this new body expanded and contracted slightly with each breath. It looked creepy. He twisted round, scrutinising himself on the monitor, trying to see if he looked any less unsettling from another angle.  
_

_“Let’s practice the voice again,” the quartermaster said. “Introduce yourself to me.”  
_

_He opened his mouth and willed the unfamiliar vocal acrobatics forth. “_ Hello…my name is…Zhahn…? _”  
_

_“No, no, no, don’t pronounce it ‘Zhahn.’ Don’t use the ‘zh’ sound for anything, they’ll think you’re French.” A blank stare prompted the quartermaster to add: “That’s a bad thing, where you’re going. Now try again.”  
_

_“_ Hello, my name is…John. John Watson _.”  
_

_“Much better. Just keep practicing. You still have plenty of time to perfect it before your mission begins.”_

 

  **10.**

 

With Sherlock safely in Andorra, rummaging through the darker secrets of a prominent pop music group who were using it as a tax haven, John had plenty of time to update his blogs. So far as Sherlock was aware, he only had one blog, in which he nattered at length about Sherlock’s adventures, entertaining the public with such juicy details as how Sherlock finally caught the Hounslow Heartbreaker (the key piece of evidence turned out not to be any jewellry belonging to his young female victims, but rather an aluminium crutch). But he had what was essentially a second blog, which he had been maintaining since his arrival in London at the apparent age of twenty. To access it, he clicked the appropriate and non-descript icon on the taskbar, then leaned forward for his retinal scan.

It had been a while since he had been sufficiently certain of his solitude to feel comfortable opening the program and transmitting the data he had collected. This time, he went on at length about, among other things: Sherlock’s various memory tricks; the glimpses he got into Mycroft’s manipulation of world events; and addenda to his previous notes on the state of socialised medicine in his country of residence, as well as news from nations which were transitioning their own systems so that they bore a greater or lesser resemblance to the one he practiced in.

Some content he elided before transmitting; John justified his reticence in talking about his relationship with Sherlock by telling himself that there had been no significant tangible developments on that front, although at the same time, he’d occasionally had to delete long passages that he’d typed on the grounds that that the committee that oversaw his research probably did not need to know about the “lovely” dinner he’d had with Sherlock overlooking the South Bank, or his continuing quest to determine precisely what colour Sherlock’s eyes should be described as.

Having completed his report, John entered the command to initiate transmission. Shortly after, the log of transmission dates appeared on the screen, with this most recent submission of data noted, in both his native language and that of his adopted home:

**10/02/2010 11:38:02 GMT**  
 **27/02/2010 23:14:24 GMT**  
 **04/03/2010 16:34:44 GMT**  
 **01/04/2010 22:22:45 GMT *NEW***

Alongside that was the log of the most recent transmissions which John had received from his homeworld:

**03/06/2003 00:11:23 GMT**  
 **04/08/2003 21:43:45 GMT**  
 **14/10/2003 15:33:27 GMT**  
 **03/12/2003 01:45:00 GMT**  
 **14/02/2004 14:23:01 GMT**  
 **20/04/2004 19:22:32 GMT**

 

 

**11.**

 

His trip to Andorra was the longest amount of time that Sherlock had spent away from John since they had met, and Sherlock did not like it. John was invaluable as a colleague, and without his stalwart protection and inadvertent but fortuitous insights, Sherlock felt a keen absence. This did not account for Sherlock’s continuing to feel that absence now that the case he was working on was over, but Sherlock attributed this to his still-unsatisfied need to decipher John’s code and discover his true purpose in Sherlock’s life. Being away from John for this long only sharpened his desire to solve the mystery, to delve more intensely than ever into John’s inner life.

There was one weakness of John’s that Sherlock had not yet exploited. John was obviously attracted to him. This neither surprised nor perturbed him; plenty of people were attracted to him for one reason or another, and to let it affect him or his work would be folly. But in this case, by allowing John to get closer to him, he could use this weakness and learn more about John than ever. In fact – Sherlock now realised – a bit of physical contact might be just the trick. If John wasn’t hiding his secrets in the flat, perhaps he was hiding them on his body. An implanted device, a false tooth…there were numerous possibilities. And allowing John to give into his pointless lustful impulses would be an excellent way for Sherlock to gain access to them.

It was decided, then: when he returned to London, he would allow John to seduce him. Purely for research purposes, of course.

 

**12.**

 

Having flown back from his continental adventure into Heathrow, Sherlock hopped on the tube, and alighted at St Pancras station. The remaining distance to Baker Street easily justified a cab ride, but Sherlock had been away for a fortnight, and walking would allow him to get caught up on any valuable bus-stop graffiti that had appeared on Euston Road whilst he was absent. Thus he did not reunite with John at 221B, but near the southwest corner of Regents Park, where John by chance was just popping out of Sainsbury’s.

It always amused John to see Sherlock with his little wheeled suitcase. He was never the sort to travel about encumbered by any object, particularly not something that slowed one down and made such a lumbering noise on the pavement. John found it easier to picture Sherlock getting on an international flight carrying nothing, buying everything he needed to wear or use upon arrival at his destination, and then discarding it all before flying home similarly unburdened.

Which one of them initiated the transfer was not clear, but soon the suitcase was being pulled by John, with the shopping in the other hand, and Sherlock was striding towards 221B with his hands in his coat pockets. “So how did it go?” John asked.

“You remember how it seemed suspicious that the band’s manager mentioned that he’d been to university with Anni-Frid Lyngstad’s cousin?”

“No, I wasn’t suspicious of that statement at all, actually.”

“Well, that was the key to unraveling the whole state of affairs.”

Sherlock said no more on the subject for several seconds, so John finally replied, “Ah. Well done, you, then, I suppose.”

At home, Sherlock hung up his coat, went into the kitchen, opened the refrigerator, took something out and put it directly into his mouth (John didn’t see what it was), chewed and swallowed it, and then had a shower. John opened the suitcase and dropped all the clothes inside into the laundry basket, and returned the toiletries to the bathroom, so that when Sherlock got out of the shower he could shave and put that stuff in his hair that he used to keep it from getting frizzy.

 

*****

 

Emerging from the bathroom, still pink and damp, Sherlock flounced over to the sofa in his silk dressing gown and sidled up to John, resting his head on John’s shoulder. “Mmm, I missed you, John, I really did,” he murmured.

John looked down at the madman who had just flopped down next to him and was now pawing at him oddly. Sherlock obviously had a theoretical knowledge of flirtatiousness, but he was only really able to apply it to vulnerable people, people like Molly Hooper – bless – who had already been weakened by his other attributes. The reaction of a normal, secure person was more along the lines of _Why am I being chatted up by this department-store mannequin?_

But John wasn’t going to hold that against Sherlock. This was the culmination of a months-long and seemingly one-sided romance, and John wasn’t going to bring it to a screeching halt just because Sherlock’s lack of experience caused him to fumble a bit. He was happy to act as Sherlock’s guide.

 

 

**13.**

 

Sherlock was pleased to find John not just receptive to his subtle, clever advances but eager to reciprocate, taking Sherlock’s hands in his own and steering them to where he wanted them to go. Within minutes, John was allowing Sherlock access to all sorts of places on his body. He ran careful hands across John’s stomach and ribs, feeling for anomalies. He found none, but without a visual search for incision scars or discolourations, he could not be entirely certain.

“I want to take your clothes off,” Sherlock said.

“I should think so,” John replied with a chuckle, and he helped Sherlock unbutton and unzip him.

That was much better. Now Sherlock could see everything. Aside from the obvious shoulder injury, John had a few scattered areas of scar tissue, which Sherlock palpated for signs of a chip or other device beneath. He couldn’t let John know what he was really up to, though, so he incorporated these examinations into firm, drawn-out caresses to the surrounding skin. In response to this attention, John was shuddering and making little noises, which Sherlock found somewhat distracting. Still, he had to crack on. He hadn’t checked John’s mouth yet.

He knew a bit about deep kissing and how it was conducted. You couldn’t just go in with guns blazing, you had to tease the other person, make them want to open their mouth. Sherlock had always been put off by the tedium of it. But now he was intrigued by all the possible methods by which this could be accomplished.

When he touched his lips to John’s, John’s mouth was already open. Not hanging open, and certainly not accessible to the degree Sherlock required, but open enough to admit and expel quick, shivery breaths. Though the contact became more heated, John did not open his mouth further until Sherlock touched his lips with the tip of his tongue, at which point John let his jaw fall open to welcome that tongue inside. Interesting: though John obviously had wanted that to happen, he did not simply ask for it. Perhaps it was rude to ask for a tongue in your mouth. He could ask about it later.

In the meantime he focused on his primary mission: to determine if John had a false tooth, in which he might hide a device to receive transmissions, or instructions for him to carry out. Sherlock carefully explored John’s mouth with his tongue, running it gently around in the wet, pink warmth, maintaining his ruse by occasionally retreating to allow John to reciprocate (presumably not with the same intentions).

John had Sherlock’s dressing gown open and was touching his penis, which had incidentally become erect. “Mmm, what’s this?” he said with a sly laugh.

“It’s nothing,” Sherlock mumbled.

“No need to be modest,” John said as he played with it. Sherlock found this moderately distracting as well, but on the other hand it suddenly seemed as though all his senses were heightened as a result, which was a helpful side effect.

His search for foreign objects in John’s mouth was fruitless; John had thirty-two real and perfectly intact teeth. But Sherlock had only just begun. There were still all sorts of places to explore. He ran his hands through John’s hair, in search of evidence of surgical interference. He clutched at John’s thighs and buttocks, kneading them, feeling for an implanted device. Despite John’s frenzied squirming, he was fairly certain that there were no detectable foreign objects in these firm but fleshy places.

Sherlock leaned back so that he could investigate John’s legs, feet, and toes, but John grabbed him and pulled him close again. He was prattling about how he’d been right all along, and Sherlock was only half paying attention until John said something about how Sherlock was his one true love. That was a bit more serious than Sherlock was expecting to hear. He’d always assumed John was just interested in getting a leg over, which was why he’d paid the situation little mind.

“I knew from the first night,” John said, “when you took the gunpowder out of my skin. My people – it’s how we know. If we touch the right person and make eye contact with them, we know. I mean, I say ‘eye contact’…I suppose what we have are essentially eyes, so yes. _Ah._ Yes!”

He seemed to be crying out not just with pleasure but with relief, at finally telling Sherlock the truth – even if Sherlock didn’t quite understand what the truth was just yet. To his surprise he felt a bit disappointed that John seemed about to simply blurt out his true identity. That would mean Sherlock did not have a reason to go on…investigating him.

“You’ll never know how happy I am that I found you, after all this time.” John gripped Sherlock’s shoulders and pulled him close, holding Sherlock’s gaze and rubbing against him as he moaned, “I’m marooned on this planet, but I don’t care, I don’t want to go home anymore. I want to stay here with you, _ah_ , just like this!”

John’s movements became increasingly frantic, seemingly desperate for friction even though it was being made freely available to him. “Let me just put this between your –” he grabbed his penis at the base and manoeuvred it between Sherlock’s thighs, thrusting, rubbing it against his skin, beneath his balls. “Oh, yes, oh, coming…”

He uttered nothing but thick, wordless noises for several seconds, and Sherlock felt warm and sodden between his thighs just as John suddenly relaxed and let his head fall back.

It was only then that Sherlock perceived how hot it had become. With the sides of his open dressing gown falling to either side of John, their body heat was trapped between them. As they gazed open-mouthed at each others’ flushed faces, Sherlock heard the words “Now you,” and then a slightly more languid John took Sherlock’s penis in hand and began to stroke it in earnest. “Do it. Come on me. Don’t you want to? That’s right, c’mon…”

He kept tugging until Sherlock felt a full-body shudder run through him, and when they both looked down there was a constellation of spunk on John’s belly, which seemed to please John greatly.

Sherlock’s limbs felt weak, but he didn’t want to collapse into that stickiness. He continued to balance on his hands and knees, more precariously now, and said, “You know I have a million questions now.”

“Naturally,” John sighed happily.

“For some reason I feel that the first one should be: If you knew months ago that we were truly soul mates, why didn’t you say anything before today?”

“It’s called _patience_ ,” John said with a soft smile. “You should try it sometime.”

Sherlock sneered. “I believe in herd immunity when it comes to patience. Everyone else seems to have it, so I don’t need it myself.” He happened to look down again, and noticed that John’s stomach was now clean and dry. “What…?”

When John saw this he ran a hand over himself, and came away with nothing on his fingers. “Oh, dear.”

Immediately, Sherlock was alert and tense again. “What do you mean, ‘Oh dear’? What’s going on?”

“I didn’t think this could happen to me while I inhabited this form,” John replied sheepishly, “but, er, there’s something that the men of my race can do that human males can’t…”

Sherlock twisted from one side to the other, as though John were hiding the answer behind his back. “What is it? John, what have you done with my DNA?”

John only smiled and pulled Sherlock close to him. He just wanted them both to be still for a little while.  “It’s alright,” he said. “Everything’s going to be alright.”

**Author's Note:**

> If you like what I do, you should follow berlynn-wohl on Tumblr. 
> 
> Also, I just want to make sure that everyone is clear that I am totally fine with people doing any of the following things:
> 
> 1\. Drawing art based on my fic  
> 2\. Recording podfics of my fic  
> 3\. Citing my fics in your master's thesis  
> 4\. Including my fic on any gold-plated audio-visual discs that are being sent into space on a probe  
> 5\. Carving excerpts of my fics into the surface of the moon with a laser  
> 6\. Identifying my fics as the cause of your descent into supervillainy
> 
> kthx


End file.
